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The energy industry’s confidence that foundation meters will avoid becoming ‘stranded assets’ appears to be growing, as former critic SSE defended its installation of 150,000 of the meters.
SSE director of metering and smart installations Sara Jane Asquith told Utility Week she was confident the meters would be integrated into the smart meter rollout, after its official start later this year.
“We are not concerned about them becoming stranded assets, although there is concern in the industry,” she said. “All meters that we install are capable of being upgraded to SMETS two and therefore enrolled onto the Data and Communications Company (DCC) so we believe we will have no stranded assets at all.”
Her comments follow an earlier interview with Utility Week last year, in which she said foundation meters posed a “massive risk” to the rollout.
Asquith’s most recent comments reflect reassurance from DCC chief executive Jonathan Simcock, who told Utility Week last month that the majority of foundation meters would be adopted as part of the rollout.
He said: “I don’t believe there will be very large numbers of stranded meters. There may be a very small number where the technical fix to get them on the DCC network is very expensive. It may well be that the right value-for-money answer is not do it. That’s purely hypothetical at the moment.”
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